


Welcome to the Crew

by CanineCaptivated



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Demonstuck, I will add the relationships as they form because otherwise it's sort of spoiler-ish, Multi, and probably more to be added, basically most characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1601057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanineCaptivated/pseuds/CanineCaptivated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Demons were a real pest problem, which is why the hunters started showing up. The best of them all gather at a base in the heart of the woods in an undetermined location. On the off chance someone gets invited there, they go out on missions to take out the previously mentioned pests, and most all of them are more than capable of taking out even the hardest to kill demons easily.</p>
<p>A few unexpected drop-ins later, they aren't so sure of that fact.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the strongest demons have been called to be under someone's leadership...and even if they aren't too happy about it, a job is a job.</p>
<p>Also known as : shit goes down, some people die, and nobody knows what the hell is going on anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the Crew

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so this is a demonstuck story, and, although I love the derse dreamers = demons idea, I haven't quite run with that idea all the way - yet. Some of them are, and others aren't, but there will be a method to my madness and I promise it will be a cool plot point later. Or at least a plot point. Anyways, here is chapter one, and be warned, I'm going to be tearing through character introductions next chapter so the ones that make appearances in this one are probably going to be more detailed than the others. This chapter has no notable gore or fights, so don't worry about that. I'll give a warning when they do.

Karkat shifted his pack from one shoulder to the other, trudging through the underbrush in the direction he’d been sent and disregarding any and all training he’d gotten before this, as he was in a safe zone and had other, much more important things to worry about. The trees were just sparse enough for the woods to be easily navigated, the mid-afternoon sun allowing for him to see the beaten down path he was supposed to be following. Birds flitted about from tree to tree and he did nothing to acknowledge their presence other than announcing loudly that if any of them dared to take a shit on him that they would be killed.

He glanced down at his wristwatch again, tugging up his jacket’s long sleeve, and noted that it was about two-thirty. Not bad time for someone coming all the way from town, but he still had no idea how much further he had to go until he reached the cabin he was supposed to be staying at.

With a short sigh, he tugged his sleeve back down to cover the watch again, and took a nervous glance around the trees. So far, he hadn’t seen much other than birds, squirrels, and rabbits, but hey, it couldn’t hurt to be careful, right?

He tilted his head first to the left, then the right, as he stopped walking to listen for anything out of line with the usual nature sounds, mainly listening for fires or footsteps. He couldn’t catch anything odd, so he shrugged and kept walking at his usual quick pace, having satisfied his curiosity.

“Where the hell is this cabin, anyways?” He muttered aloud as he continued onwards. “I know it’s a long way out but you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me with this…”

“If you really think getting here is a long trip, then _boy_ are our expeditions going to _kill_ you, and not just in the sense that we’ll be hunting the most dangerous creatures in existence.” A singsong voice interrupted his mutterings, followed by a snicker and some rustling. It sounded like a girl.

Karkat’s head jerked upwards in alarm, and he glanced rapidly around him, but couldn’t find the source. There was a light thud behind him and the source of the voice snickered again, and he whirled around to face them with his sickle out.

It clashed with steel, and he was quickly disarmed by the slight girl. She made some clicking noises as if to scold him, mockingly wagging a finger back and forth as she herself twirled his sickle around before abruptly shoving it into one of what seemed to be at least fifty spare holsters on her crooked belt. “Shame on you, mister Vantas, attacking your purrfectly friendly escort!” she feigned offense, sarcastically and overdramatically placing a hand over her chest and leaning back as if to indicate that she would fall over.

This earned a scowl from Karkat, and the girl just giggled and tossed his sickle back to him without so much as a word of warning, causing him to fumble around with it in the air while trying to catch it. He grumbled a bit under his breath before shoving the sickle back into his own place for it, at his right hip’s holster. He deadpanned at the girl in front of him, though he attempted to take in her features as he did so. From the way she was talking, it sounded like she was going to be one of his new teammates, and like it or not, he’d have to be very familiar with her.

The girl – he made a mental note to learn her name later – had short, about shoulder length red hair that was covered for the most part by a ratty looking blue hat, which resembled a cat if he looked hard enough. She had a few freckles, and among other facial features he noted big and bright green eyes and, currently, a wide grin. She wore a pair of what seemed to be night vision goggles around her neck, draped there loosely and without much respect for the equipment. She currently had both of her hands stuffed deep into the pockets of a half-unzipped, oversized green hoodie, under which was a black T-shirt depicting a lion. Her sleeves were rolled halfway up her arms, which were bandaged, likely for reinforcement – although he knew she had to be pretty tough to be out in this neck of the woods, let alone to work at the cabin he was heading to, she was pretty small and he had no doubt that in the line of work she was in, broken arms weren’t unlikely for someone of her small stature.

Finally appearing to notice that he was looking her over, she pulled her hands out of her pockets and held them out, and he saw that the steel that had combatted his sickle earlier was located there– she was wearing blue gloves with sturdy steel claws attached to the knuckles. The belt he’d noticed earlier did in fact have a great deal of holsters, though not nearly as many were empty as he had initially thought. There were multiple pouches, most of which looked like they had things in them. Cargo shorts that stopped just above her kneecaps and also had an abundance of pockets were met with kneepads and high stockings that covered the rest of her legs.

Thick blue boots going past her ankles finished it off, and Karkat concluded his observation, stashing away the information so that, were the time to come, he’d be able to recognize her more quickly.

He’d been taught to do this at the school he’d gone to. It also helped for identifying corpses, but he preferred not to think about that part. ‘ _Hopefully I’ll never have to use the information for that reason, because hopefully everyone is going to stay very much alive and not dead.’_

Apparently he still managed to spend too much time thinking about it, however, and was called back to attention when the girl snapped her fingers.

“Did you fall asleep over there or what? We’re supposed to be headed fur the cabin!” she asked, with an evident tone of excitement. Karkat rolled his eyes in response.

“Listen, miss-“

“Nepeta.” she cut in.

He continued anyways, although he acknowledged that she’d spoken and corrected himself. “Alright, _Nepeta_. But here’s the thing I don’t understand. If you were supposed to be my escort, then where the ever-living hell were you at the town four miles back? You know, the one I was supposed to meet you at? I had to get directions from a guy at the bar. Not the most trustworthy source, if you ask me.” His irritation was thinly veiled, but she appeared to shrug it off.

“I showed up _now_ , didn’t I? ‘Sides, I wasoccupied at the time I was supposed to be meeting you.” Nepeta admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck and giving an apologetic smile.

‘ _She doesn’t seem to be taking this very seriously…isn’t she a professional? She’s acting like a little kid! Whatever, she’s probably just trying to lighten the mood or some cheerful bullshit like that.’_ Deciding it wasn’t worth it to press for further information, Karkat grumbled and started down the pathway again. Nepeta followed at his side eagerly.

“You’re gonna love it back at headquarters! Everyone is really nice! Except for, well, _Eridan –_ he’s the worst scum there is - Vriska, and Equius _sometimes,_ even though I tell him not to be so stand-offish, and I guess Sollux isn’t particularly fond of people, but, Aradia, Kanaya, Tavros and Feferi are fun, and Terezi likes roleplaying with me sometimes! And we’re going to get four other new members, so you showed up at just the right time! John, Jade, Jane and Jake are also gonna be there! Funny how they all have J-names, don’cha think? Hey, by the way, what town are you from again? It wasn’t on your application form but I bet it’s really interesting and all, and, hey, it’ll make for great conversation while we’re walking, unless, you don’t like to talk about it, which I get, too, because you know sometimes towns kinda get evacuated and abandoned and stuff, but, hey, we’re learning how to help kill the demons before they can reach town, so I guess if revenge is your motivator, there you go! We have other stuff that we do, obviously, but first things first when we get back to base you should probably get some more gear and stuff, just to be safe because you know how it is fighting off monsters and weapons are good to have on hand at all times and –“

Karkat cut of the enthusiastically rambling girl here. “What’s wrong with my sickles?”

“Huh?” she tilted her head to the left and then seemed to remember what she’d been saying and nodded, putting on a more serious expression. “Oh, right. Listen, it doesn’t matter how good your training with those is, if I can disarm you that quickly without even trying, then you need a lot more practice before you can even think about going out with just those. Long-range weapons can be just as important as close-combat ones like my claws and your sickles, for instance, guns or bows and arrows. Depending on the approach you like to take, loud and powerful or silent and stealthy, there’ll be plenty of weapons for you to use as secondary ones, and we get tested in marksmanship once every few days.” She explained simply, flashing her claws and showing him first hand that they apparently extended past what they were at if she flicked her wrist a certain way, and then pointing them at his neck as if to show him how vulnerable he was.

He gulped and, just as quickly as she had put them there, she removed her claws from the air just in front of his neck, and smiled sweetly.

“But that’s not something we worry about just now!”

Unable to think of a sufficiently irritated and or clever response, Karkat said nothing, and this time she kept quiet as well. They walked along the path and soon came to a fork in the road. Without hesitation Nepeta turned to the one on the right side, then after a few minutes, went off that trail and stood at the base of a tree while she waited for Karkat to follow closely enough.

“Why are we getting off the tr-“

Nepeta deadpanned and cut him off before he could complete the sentence. “What part of ‘base’ do you not get? With such a dangerous job, you don’t seriously think we could have a pathway leading straight to it, right? To put it bluntly we don’t have an actual path because it’s a bad idea. Now, watch me closely.”

He shut his mouth and watched her begin to scale the tree, and point to some notches in the branches. “This is your map. Now that you know to follow these if you get lost…..I want you to try and keep up with me! It’s your first job!”

“Wait, what?” no explanation was given to him before she hopped out of the tree and started sprinting in seemingly random directions. ‘ _You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How fast is she even moving? This is ridiculous – shit!’_

Quickly realizing he was going to get left behind, Karkat began to run after her, huffing and puffing by the time she stopped, apparently having reached the destination. “God, fucking, dammit,” he wheezed, “that’s faster than I’ve seen some horses move, what kind of pace do you keep here?”

“A sensible one,” Nepeta responded earnestly, then smirked just a little and added, “but just so you know, that wasn’t it. I just wanted to test you.”

He shot her an accusatory glare as he immediately straightened up to protest. “Why the fuck would would you have to _test_ me?! I already took the tests, that’s how I got into this big-ass cabin for all the top hunters, remember?!”

She shrugged. “I suppaws you’ve got a point there, but to be purrfectly honest, they miss a few things sometimes. Aaaaaanyways, now that we’re in a safe area-“

He interrupted her here. “Wait, wait, hold the fuck up, this whole forest, excluding some corners, is a safe zone. I studied all that shit and everything, we’ve been in a ‘safe area’ the whole time.” He recalled researching the area, taking up more of his spare time than he’d have liked to, and a lot of painstaking effort had gone into memorizing which areas were safe and which weren’t.

“It’s not actually _safe,_ just, _safe-er._ There’s no such thing as 100% safe, but, personally, I think it’s a lot safer here, where everyone can hear you scream, than it is out there with just a few people. Besides, I have to check your equipment and it’s safer to do that here than anywhere else in the forest because-“

“Because checking my equipment means _I’m_ going to be totally unarmed and _you’re_ going to have a slower reaction time,” he said, catching on to Nepeta’s line of thinking as well as digesting the fact that all his studying hadn’t been the _most_ useful, but still had at least some purpose.

“Smart boy,” she praised with a snicker, “but I still hafta do my job so stand still, would you?” he did as instructed.

**(POV Shift)**

‘ _At least my recruit is interesting,’_ Nepeta mused as she slowly walked a circle around him to perform her evaluation. ‘ _and kinda cute, too.’_

She had always been big on romance, but never her own. She just set other people up, and could distinctly remember a ten year old her swearing she’d never have a crush. Her exact words: ‘ _I’d rather catch a deer than a date.’_

She allowed herself a grin at the memory, and noted Karkat giving her a quizzical look before she remembered what she was doing and realized she was supposed to be making her ‘official’ evaluation. She cleared the smile from her face and tried to look like a figure of authority – she totally was, at least for a month or so as long as she was in charge of his adjustments to life at the cabin. Kinda funny considering he was actually a month or two older than her, if what his application said was correct.

She sized up the boy and compared his height to her own – he was short but still a little taller than herself, she would have to guess he was around 5’4 or 5’5, as she herself was 5’3. ‘ _He’d be able to fit in a lot of small spaces.’_ she noted. His black hair was messy, sticking out at odd angles but still retaining a semblance of style, so, that was intentionally done. Above his dark brown eyes, his eyebrows seemed set in a downward arc, but that might’ve just been the expressions he was making, the grumpy scowl he had on was endearing to say the least - but also not the point of her evaluation. She put herself back on track.

He had some plain goggles, likely for wind or underwater use, pushed up onto his forehead, and a dark red bandanna around his neck that told her it was likely for wind use after all. He wore a black jacket, the likes of which was fully zipped up, and had a belt on with two holsters for sickles, one of which was unoccupied – she would have to ask about it later. Dark blue track pants – wow, not a good choice for their purposes at the base, Kanaya would have to help him fix his outfit a little later – held up by a belt and the holster in a way that might have looked kinda cool but mostly ended up looking dorky because he tucked his shirt in. He wore plain-looking tennis shoes, another part of his outfit that would need fixing.

At least he _almost_ dressed correctly on the top half, even if he had the wrong type of goggles. And hey, she never knew where he would get assigned – the outfits sometimes depended on that.

Slung around his shoulder was a bag, or, and she could already picture him telling her, a ‘satchel’, or some other rather more important-sounding word for ‘ratty sack of fabric to hold stuff in’. She walked around behind him and slipped it off his shoulder to look through it quite shamelessly, despite his protests to give it back. She scaled a nearby tree to get a look at it’s contents while he shouted at her from below.

‘ _Let’s see…..eh…he’s got a few things in here that are useful, but others look pretty useless to me. Maybe they’re more for sentimental purposes.’_

Stashed inside the bag were a few items, most of them looking worn-out. Examining the more useful items and ignoring the others since they weren’t her business, she was pleased to see that he had brought a gun after all – a plain black desert eagle, which wasn’t an uncommon handgun to see because of the firepower it packed – and she quickly pulled the magazine out and unloaded it to see what kind of ammunition he kept in it. .44 magnum, cheap and also fairly common. She stuck the magazine back in and placed the pistol back in the bag to keep going through his belongings. She found a handful of trail mix, half-eaten of course, an empty water bottle, a pocket knife, some bandages, and a notepad with pencils. There was also a change of clothes, but she ignored it, seeing as it was practically the same outfit he had on.

Satisfied with her investigation, she placed the objects she’d taken out back into the bag and launched herself out of the tree, landing in front of the agitated Karkat and handing him his bag. She went over what she knew about him. She’d really have to go check his information on the computer later…‘ _Okay, so, from what I’ve gathered, he’s got a pretty short fuse and likes close up combat. He’s small enough to fit in a lot of small places and he doesn’t have the best endurance but he definitely isn’t slow either…maybe with training he’d be better at that? He seems edgy and I guess he did his research so at least he kinda knows what he’s doing, if only based on what he’s read...where are we going to put him? Oh, right, I should get back to the point.’_

“Good packing for a rookie, and Kanaya will help out with your clothes – I think the outfit looks fine but some features lack practicality. Anyways, before we go inside, let’s focus on our chores.”

He shot her an incredulous look. “Hold the fuck up. What do you mean, _our_ chores? Why do I have to help with shit _you_ didn’t do?”

Nepeta stifled a laugh at that.

“Fur the record, mister Vantas,” she procured a short list from one of the pockets on her shorts and showed him the three or four things they had to do, “these are the chores assigned to _you._ And _I’m_ helping _you_ with stuff that you have to do, to get you started. I did all of my chores already, you’re lucky I’m helping with yours while you don’t have a partner.”

“Oh.” He said quietly, face flushed in apparent embarrassment for his accusation.

She laughed and then handed him the chore list. “We only have three things on it, alright? First thing, picking and checking your weapons, which is really boring and don’t need description, then sigil practice after that just in case, then clean up.”

He frowned at the mention of the last one. “I get that it’s a living quarters too and all so it makes some sense, but aren’t you guys, like, professionals and shit? It’s kind of weird that you have to clean up after each other’s trash like a bunch of kindergarteners..”

“It’s not that kind of clean up,” Nepeta explained, “it’s, well, the kind you do out in the field….you know, area clean up.”

Karkat still didn’t grasp the concept.

“So what, we’re also environmentalists or something? What are we picking up? Can you tell me that much?”

She rolled her eyes. “Clean up. We remove any unwanted _pests_ from other places.” At this it seemed to click for the new recruit.

“So, you mean…”

“Yep! We’re gonna find and kill a demon that’s been pestering a city nearby! Your first real field mission! I’m coming and assisting you of course, so it won’t be independent obviously, but still! It’ll be fun!” Nepeta flashed the rookie a smile, and he returned a nod. She might’ve been disheartened at his lack of enthusiasm but then she remembered that, being new and all, he was probably going to take the mission very seriously, when in reality it was probably just going to be a simple one, with a low-class demon and little effort required to subdue said demon.

But she wouldn’t tell him that, because talk about being a killjoy! She didn’t have the heart to tell him this mission was probably just going to be small fry.

“But, first things first, we have to get your other jobs done! While we’re over at weapons, we’ll also get you a ranged weapon that I really recommend you use unless you’re got uh, really really lousy aim, in which case, well, we’ll have to deal with that later and you’ll probably just end up using something kinda lame like a squirt bottle full of holy water, haha!” she giggled as she brought up the memory of her big, intimidating looking friend frantically chasing around a demon with a blue squirt bottle.

Equius had been so upset when he couldn’t use the bow properly and didn’t know how to use the close range weapons. She had to console him about the incident and assure him that no, she did not respect him less, but yes, he should probably figure out how to use a different weapon. It took up a solid two hours of their downtime. Two hours out of two, on that particular day.

“Hey, earth to Nepeta! This is the guy that’s been watching you laugh at your own joke for about a solid two minutes, wondering if you need a psychiatrist or some shit.” Karkat’s impatient tone snapped her out of the memory, and she quickly nodded.

“Right! Sorry, I was just thinking about this time that actually happened, heh.” She rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. “Let’s get to the weapons department now, shall we?”

With this she lead him over to where they kept all of the weapons. They ran into Tavros on the way there, turns out he was headed over there to tell them not to take certain weapons that there wasn’t as much ammunition for.

Tavros was the kind of person who was exactly as friendly as he looked. Nobody could be quite sure how tall he was, considering that he was always sitting down – he was paraplegic, and as so, could not feel either of his legs or use them in any way, which left him in a wheelchair. If it bothered him, he’d never expressed it. He had a mowhawk, a line of black hair that didn’t stick up so much as kind of stick out and back because he brushed it that way and didn’t gel it. The rest of his head was closely shaved, but you could still tell there was hair there. His eyes were brown and his eyebrows were a little thick and arched slightly. What he was wearing didn’t usually matter unless it was for weather circumstances, today was warm out, so he just wore a black T-shirt and some pants. The wheelchair itself wasn’t particularly customized, although he had been pranked once or twice and long story short they painted over that with a cool red flame pattern on the rim wheels. He had a sticker of a bullfighter on one of them, apparently he thought they were the coolest things when he was younger before he joined them at base.

“Great timing, Tavros! This is Karkat! Karkat, this is Tavros!” Nepeta introduced the two and stepped to the side so that they could introduce more formally than that, and Tavros wheeled himself over to be in front of Karkat, holding a hand out for a shake.

Karkat, who had been standing still and looking mildly confused, shook his head as if to clear a thought and accepted the handshake. “Nice to meet you, and all that shit.”

Tavros nodded. “Yeah, nice to meet you, too. Uh, anyways, I was supposed to tell you guys not to take a few specific weapons, they were…..I’m pretty sure it was just the two sniper rifles you weren’t supposed to take, everything else has an okay amount of ammo.” At this he turned and was about to move away, but then he seemed to remember something and turned around to look back over his wheelchair. “Oh! Hey, Karkat, I forgot to mention. If you have experience, you should probably go with a shotgun or rifle. Not that I’m trying to tell you what to do or anything! It’s just that, the call you’re going out on later, it’s one of the armored demons, and I thought you might want to know that.”

“Alright, that makes choosing a lot easier. Thanks.” Karkat replied, and Tavros grinned and went on his way.

“Tavros is really nice, huh? I didn’t know that this one was armored, I was going to have you take just your plain old pistol!” Nepeta laughed. “Good thing he warned us, right?”

“Hm?” Karkat shook his head again and tried to cover the fact that he hadn’t been paying attention. “Oh, right.”

They continued on towards the weapons shack in moderate silence until just before arriving there, Nepeta broke it.

“You’re wondering how someone in a wheelchair made it here, aren’t you?”

“No! I was not! That would be kinda a dick move on my part and-“ Nepeta raised an eyebrow at him.

He sighed. “Yeah. I feel like a festering sack of shit for it, but yeah, I was wondering. How _did_ he make it here?”

Nepeta shook her head. “Don’t feel too bad, everyone gets curious every now and then. Besides, you weren’t rude straight to his face about it, and as unfortunate as it is to tell you, that’s better than a few people here can say.” Karkat frowned at that and looked like he wanted to say something, but Nepeta continued speaking. “Anyways, Tavros got here because he got a near perfect score in all the research exams and because he may not look like it, but he’s great with close range weapons like swords and lances. I guess al that wheeling around really helped his upper body strength!” She said cheerily.

“Woah. That written exam was hell, and you’re telling me he almost aced it?” Karkat asked in disbelief.

Nepeta nodded, and grinned mischeviously. “We actually do have one person here who really did ace it. Kanaya Maryam, the only person in the whole base to get a perfect 100% on the test. Not to mention she totally rocks with a chainsaw.”

Karkat’s jaw dropped, but he regained his cool quickly. “You people are un-fucking-believable. With your perfect-ass test scores and shit….” He grumbled.

“Aww, you’re just mad because you didn’t do as well on it! And remember, you got in here too Karkat!”

“You’re right. And that means I’m just as awesome as all you fuckers, I just need more practice at it.” With this he crossed his arms confidently, and Nepeta just laughed.

“We’re at the weapons shed, by the way.” She said, unlocking the mentioned shed with a key she pulled out of one of her many pockets and pulling the door open. Karkat walked in and started looking around at the weapons.

The shed wasn’t really all that big, but the weapons were organized and shelves and two small tables in the center of the room. The tables held the guns, and racks and shelves on the wall held the close range weapons and the bows. The shed’s outside appearance looked like it had been hastily thrown together out of wood, but on the inside, one could see that it had been reinforced a lot.

Karkat lifted a rifle and looked curiously down the barrel. Nepeta didn’t bother to tell him off, considering that nobody there could possibly be dumb enough to shoot themselves in the face. She turned to inspect some of the knives she planned to use.

“Hey, Nepeta.” Karkat spoke up from the other side of the room, still checking out the guns, “Everyone here seems to have got in for some specialty or another, right? What did you get in with? Or, better put, what are you so great at that you got all the way here for it?”

“Hmm? Well….” She thought on the question for a second.

“You’ll see most of it when we get out on the field mission, but it’d be rude not to answer your question, soo…..I got in here for a few reasons, really. I specialize in stealth, as you learned the hard way on your way here…” She snickered a little, recalling the surprised and frightened expression he’d had on his face when she snuck on him earlier.

“And,” she continued, “I just so happen to be an expert on close range and survival tactics! I grew up in the woods, so naturally, I had to pick up a few things, right? And then someone told me about the tests to get in here and I figured, why not, you know? So, yeah, that’s pretty much how I got here. I didn’t do as great on the test as Tavros and Kanaya did, but I didn’t do terrible either. One thing I _really sucked at_ was the guns segment. Before the test, I’d only ever handled an old hunting rifle, so I had no clue what to do with the pistol. I’ve been working on it though.” She shrugged and pulled a few of the knives off the shelf and tucked them into a pocket on the right side of her belt, where they’d be easy to access.

“Cool.” Karkat set down the other gun he was looking at and moved over to one of the shotguns. After looking at it for a moment, he gestured to it. “Is this one okay?”

Nepeta nodded. “That’ll work! Now we have to lock up and I can take you into the cabin. You’ll probably meet almost everyone in there, so be ready for a lot of introductions! I’m not sure if the other recruits are there yet or not, but if they aren’t, a few people might be missing. I think it was Vriska and Terezi that went out to meet the four of them. Traveling in a group any bigger wouldn’t make sense, I guess.”

Karkat picked up the shotgun and the two locked up the shed before walking over to the larger building on campus, a big wooden cabin.

The porch was shaded by a piece of the roof sticking out to cover it, and had a railing that was more for design than any other reason. A well-drawn sigil was painted onto the front door in red, so it stuck out well enough from the brown-ish color that the door and the rest of the cabin was. Smaller ones lined the bottom corners of the windows and bigger ones were on the other doors, and Nepeta knew that there were more sigils on the back of all of them, as an extra precaution. A fence surrounded the area, which was currently opened because it was daytime and people would have an easier time moving around that way.

There was a chimney, but it didn’t look like it was in use, and it probably would never be in use because the smoke drifting out of it would alert others to where the cabin was.

Nepeta noted that Kanaya’s garden by the back looked to be a little out of order, and thought about telling the older girl, then decided against it because if something happened, Kanaya would be the first to know.

She tapped Karkat’s shoulder and motioned to the door. “Let’s go! Everyone’s probably waiting by the front door anyways, why keep them there?”

“Right.” Karkat nodded, and the two soon pushed the door open.

Just as Nepeta had predicted, everyone else, save Terezi, Vriska, and the other new recruits, were waiting by the door.

“Karkat, welcome to the crew.”


End file.
